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Interesting discussion folks.

I have several inboxes
- physical inbox
- email inbox
- moleskine
- OF inbox
- Evernote
- voicemail

Each morning I process these, doing, trashing, adding to the projects list in OF. I process all of the Inboxes to zero.

During the day, I add
- new emails to OF projects
- flagged emails to OF

Flagged emails are principally emails I've sent which I need assurance have been dealt with. I love the linkback and inclusion of full text.

I set aside time for planning, usually first thing on a Monday or straight after a big meeting while things are fresh.

Collection and Planning, that works very well for me.

Problems...

Working in Context? This is less easy for me. I work from home, I work on my computer and contexts blur. There are contexts I find useful, like Agenda:Individual or Cogitate but I find that most Mac subdivision like Mac:Email or Mac:Create or Mac:Research all of which I use not significant enough. I hardly ever work from context, given that I find myself in most of them all of the time, so even useful ones like an Agenda context get ignored.

Weekly Review. I have periods of time when this goes very well, I always review my project list, it's going through the supporting folders that's the issue.
I have
- my OF project list
- Active folders
- Archive folders

I usually review my project list once a week, but the active folders get it once a fortnight or so.

Doing. Ah here's the rub. I have periods of time when I use iCal for this. I sync with iCal and then plan my day by dragging todos out of the sidebar onto the calendar and then review end of day. This can be productive (even if it's against the spirit of the David) however you can end up shuffling items around in iCal which is a pain. But at times it's a very useful way of focussing on doing, just these items today.

I don't really use OFs internal calendar. I wish I had a better handle on it to be frank. I'm sure in conjunction with perspectives I could come up with a way of improving on my iCal approach.
 
I'm realising that others appear to have several separate inboxes, which they effectively process separately, using OF as the list management/review/reminder tool only.

I see the sense of that (takes away my worry about processing things twice), but don't think it will work for me. I need to have just one "pile" of stuff, that I can go through all at once. For too long I've had lots and lots of little piles of stuff, some getting forgotten, and one of the biggest appeals of GTD for me is the concept of "chuck everything into one bucket so it won't get forgotten, but don't process it until you take it out.

Of course there'll always be exceptions - stuff that doesn't get to the bucket before it's done - but I want to get as close to that principal as possible because it's key to success for me.
 
MacBerry... since you are on the newer side of this, I think you will learn with time that DA's (Start with one big pile) is a starting spot, not the end goal.

If you read further, his later books/podcasts/speeches he talks about multiple inboxes because realistically "one inbox to rule them all" is just way to unrealistic and ultimately restrictive.

It doesn't matter how many inboxes you have, just that you know when/how to process them and that you don't spend any time taking thigns in and out of them. They go in and when they come out, they get processed.

For example, I have an ANOTHER physical inbox at work. I litterally throw anything into it during the week (notes, business cards, papers, things to read, things that just land on my desk) and process it once or twice a week.

I also have voice mail which is another inbox, that I process daily or as it happens.

I also have my Email inbox (Outlook) which I process in email sprints (very Merlin Mann of me) 3-4 times a day with the goal being to get to Inbox Zero by the end of the day, but not spending my entire day waiting for the bell to go off like a rat.

Just don't take things so litteral, because no application, no matter how great, can do everything.

BZ
 
I have an idea.
How about if OG just wired David Allens brain directly into the software...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by colicoid View Post
I have an idea.
How about if OG just wired David Allens brain directly into the software...
You want to go to Help --> Send Feedback if you want to add your vote to others requesting this feature.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by colicoid View Post
I have an idea.
How about if OG just wired David Allens brain directly into the software...
No, no good. I need my brain wired in, not his. He just needs to be on the end of the phone 24/7.
 
I think I need to clarrify/simplify my requests.

While I would like to have my hand held, at least until the habits form, I can see how annoying that could be for those already with the habit. So this is what I'd actually like to see from a practical point of view:

1) An option or more likely an add on to hold the new users hand through processing and reviewing, until he has the habit. It would be critical that the option could be turned OFF when not required any longer/at all.

2) Many many more options for auto-collection. I know that for me, and for several colleagues I've watched, the number of inboxes IS an issue, and there would be benefit for me/them in having some things automatically collected into one bucket. While Dave may not argue that there must only be one inbox, I doubt he argues there should be more than absolutely necessary. However, absolutely key to this is that the collection MUST be configurable, so that the user can decide what is collected and from where. Some users may collect only new mail with a specific subject, some may collect that and new iCal items in a specific calendar, and others may collect nearly everything new, but the point is that it should be possible to collect stuff automatically if I want to.

I can't for the life of me see the logic of allowing some things to be collected (mail with a given subject), but not other things. Why mail but not iCal for example? Obviously the logic is simply that OG can't do everything at once, but I can't see any argument against having the facility when resources do allow?

I dare say a lot could be done through scripting and spotlight, but I can't get spotlight to do what I need using the GUI, and don't yet have any scripting skills.

Mark

Last edited by MacBerry; 2008-08-29 at 07:04 AM..
 
 


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